Chapter 11
The suite door clicked shut behind me and I didn't lock it.
That was the point. I could leave. He knew it and I knew it. Snow pressed against the windows in that same blurred white I'd seen from the boardroom, only now it was close enough to hear. The traffic sixteen floors down was a faint hiss. The room held its heat.
He stood by the low table where a crystal glass sat untouched. Not the boardroom glass, but the same cut. Same amber. His jacket was off. Black shirt, sleeves pushed to his elbows. Hands clasped loosely in front of him. He didn't move toward me.
"You came back," he said.
"I did," I said. My voice sounded smaller than I wanted it to. I cleared my throat. "I want to be clear about tonight."
He nodded once. Waited.
I set my bag down on the chair by the door and kept my coat on. My hands were cold. I tucked them under my arms for a second, then let them out.
"Can we turn that light on?" I asked. The lamp in the corner was off. The overhead was too bright.
He reached over and switched the corner lamp on, then switched the overhead off. Warm tungsten. Same as the boardroom. The glass caught it and threw a thin line across the table.
"Better," I said.
He stayed where he was, about eight feet away. That mattered.
"I needed the contract funded by morning," I said. "That's why I stayed in that room. That's why I said what I said."
"Not after tonight," he said, quiet.
"Yes." I breathed. I could hear it. "So I want to say what tonight is and what it isn't. Out loud. Before anything else."
His jaw tightened. Just a flicker along the side. His hands were still clasped.
"Go ahead," he said.
I took a step closer to the table, not to him. I needed something to do with my eyes. I looked at the glass.
"Tonight is one night," I said. "Consensual. Only what we both say yes to, as we go. If either of us stops, we stop. No questions."
He didn't interrupt.
"Tomorrow it doesn't become a relationship," I said. "It doesn't become access. You don't call it a favor I owe. I don't call it a promise you made beyond what you already put in writing."
The air in the room shifted. He unclasped his hands, then clasped them again. Knuckles pale.
"The payment you authorized," I said. "The contract delivery. That stands regardless of what happens or doesn't happen in this room tonight. That's not conditional on this. You said it wasn't. I need you to say it again."
He looked at me for a long three seconds. I counted my breaths.
"It stands," he said. "Funds wired at nine a.m. Contract delivered by courier by ten. Regardless."
"Even if I leave right now," I said.
"Even if you leave right now."
My shoulders dropped a fraction. I hadn't realized I'd held them up.
"And what's in here stays in here," I said. "No one else. No guards. No assistant. No story at the office."
"Agreed."
I finally looked up from the glass to his face. His eyes were steady. The stubble caught the lamplight.
"Then I need to hear you say the other part plainly," I said. My mouth was dry. "That you want this. Not that it's interesting. That you want me, and that you'll stop the second I say so."
He exhaled through his nose. His hands released and hung at his sides. Open. He flexed them once.
"I want you, Claire," he said. His voice was low and even. "I have since you sat down in that chair and didn't look away. If you say stop, I stop. If you say no, it's no. That's the rule for tonight and for any time after."
The way he said my name did something to my chest. I swallowed.
"Say not after tonight means choice," I said. "Not price."
He stepped closer, just one step, and stopped with the table still between us.
"Not after tonight means choice," he said. "Your choice. Not my price."
The snow ticked against the glass. The radiator clicked.
I slipped my coat off and laid it over the back of the chair. My white shirt felt thin. I kept my hands visible. That had become important to me.
"Okay," I said. My breathing was audible now. I didn't try to hide it. "Then okay."
He didn't move to touch me. He waited, hands still open, jaw tight then loosening as he let out a slow breath.
"Do you want to sit?" he asked.
I nodded. I sat on the edge of the couch. He sat on the other end, leaving a cushion between us.
"Tell me where," he said.
"Start with hands," I said. "Just hands. And ask before anything more."
He turned his palm up on the cushion between us. An invitation, not a grab.
I looked at his hand, then at him. I placed mine in his. His fingers were warm. He didn't close around me right away. He waited until I curled my fingers first.
"Like this?" he asked.
May you like
"Yes," I said. "Like that."
We sat there in the lamplight with the city snow-blurred beyond us and the whiskey untouched on the table, and for the first time since he'd asked that question in the boardroom, the room felt like it was mine too.
